


On the Other Side of the Jungle

by Sunchales



Category: The Road to El Dorado (2000)
Genre: Implied Sexual Content, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 13:51:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4140165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunchales/pseuds/Sunchales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Our trio of explorers finds a hidden village! They think their days of wandering in the jungle are over, but their hostess is not all she seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Other Side of the Jungle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brigdh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brigdh/gifts).



> First, Brigdh, I'm sorry for fulfilling this assignment at almost literally the last minute. But at least it's done, right?
> 
> Also, _The Road to El Dorado_ is the property of Dreamworks Animation. I am not profiting from this story.
> 
> Lastly, neither _The Road to El Dorado_ nor this story is an accurate depiction of Aztec religious practices.

While kneeling on the stone floor of the temple, Chel pulled the black leather glove over her hand, made a fist, and grinned at the resultant crinkling sound. She scooped some of the piles of gold beside her into her open canvas bag, sealed up the woven sack, slung it over her shoulder, and rose to her feet.

On her way out, she glanced behind her and saw a tiny gray mouse skittering away from the partly flesh-covered skeleton. Thoughts of what might have transpired in the temple—was it at all like the one she had fled from?—came flooding back to her mind, despite her attempts to banish them when she first entered its grounds, but then she saw Tulio and Miguel waving at her on the ground below, and her worries deserted her. She ran toward them, bag of gold jingling and bouncing against her upper back, and joined her companions with a fond laugh and shared embrace. They then pressed further into the jungle, and Miguel assured Chel that Altivo had been tied beside a river to drink.

Her prediction that her and her new comrades’ lack of preparation would make their journey “interesting” proved true in every way imaginable. Their meager food supply forced them to seek out wild sustenance they had never tasted previously, and they found that mushrooms made a singularly rich repast, except for the blue and purple ones that caused vomiting and nightmares and the red and white ones that created indescribable adventures of the mind. Their nonexistent medical supplies led them to observe the animals around them more carefully than they ever had, so they determined which frogs were toxic and which furry quadrupedal carnivores had to be sneaked past at best. (“If anything happens,” Tulio had said when discussing the latter beasts, “remember that we can throw down Altivo.”) And, for some reason, the armadillo Tulio and Miguel met before their arrival in El Dorado always accompanied the trio and their horse. Chel never said so outright, but she wondered if the little creature’s presence might have safeguarded them from further harm in this hungry jungle.

Most interesting of all, however, was their discovery of a village at the edge of the lush forest. All human parties fell upon the ground and kissed it when they saw the rows of small clay houses and the stone pyramid in the distance. Chel did not bother to see how Altivo and the armadillo reacted to the sight of a human habitation, but she imagined that they would gesticulate if they could.

When they lifted their heads from the dirt, Tulio broke the silence: “So where are all the people? Are we even allowed to be here?”

“Relax, Tulio,” said Miguel. “We’ve won over wary natives with our natural charm before; we can do it again with no trouble—especially with Chel here.”

Chel shook her head at him, but she smiled nonetheless, as did Tulio.

Suddenly, she heard the sound of several sandal-shod feet padding the ground. A short, squat woman in some kind of peach-colored hooded robe trotted out from the house nearest the travelers and spread her arms wide. Behind her followed a troupe of children, each dressed in a similar brightly colored garment—some in yellow, some in red, still others in blue, and even more in green and purple.

“Welcome, wayfarers, to our fair village!” said the woman. “What has brought you here?”

Tulio cleared his throat only for Miguel to step forth first. In a tone slightly less imitation-regal than that he used when impersonating a god, he declared, “Hello, my good…neighbor! My comrades and I mean you no harm, only a desire to partake of whatever hospitality you might have to offer.”

Instead of laughing in his face, as Chel expected, the woman executed a slight but graceful bow. “We have the greatest hospitality you could ever ask for. Come with me, I will make you comfortable for the night.”

Miguel whipped around to face Tulio and Chel. “What do you say? Should we trust them?” he whispered.

“ _Now_ you’re asking my advice?” Tulio whispered back. “I would mark this day on my calendar if I had one.”

“We haven’t seen any other places to get a meal and a roof over our heads,” said Chel.

The two con men looked at each other.

“Well, that settles it, then,” said Miguel. Turning back to the village woman, he said, “My companions and I accept your kind offer, generous one.”

The woman emitted a cry of joy and wrapped her arms around Miguel’s waist. Before he could react to her, she let him go and turned to the pack of children.

“You have heard his word, children! We must share our feast with these strangers!” She beckoned to the trio and their animals with a wave of her hand, and she followed her children back into the clay house.

The promise of more food than she or her comrades had seen in days vibrated to a high pitch in Chel’s mind as she, Tulio, and Miguel ran behind the villagers. Altivo walked beside them, but Tulio quickly tethered him to a post that strangely happened to be planted right outside the house. As the horse whined, Tulio patted his flank, as if to reassure him that he would not be forgotten.

Once inside the clay house, they discovered it to consist of a long, broad kitchen on the ground floor and a stone staircase leading to an unseen upper story. What caught Chel’s attention was the abundance of fruit on the table that stretched seemingly from one end of the kitchen to the other: hills of gleaming yellow and red bananas, mounds of golden gooseberries to rival the fabled stores of El Dorado itself, gobs of gorgeous green grapes mingling with their purple counterparts, mangoes as red as the first burst of sunrise, brown yuca roots that promised warmth and tenderness. The village woman stood to one side of the table, her children gathered around her.

Both Tulio and Miguel clung to each other, apparently attempting to refrain from stampeding to the table and wolfing down everything in sight. Chel would have grinned at the sight if not for her own attempts to temper an identical feeling in herself.

The village woman said to her children, “Now, you all know the rules….”

“Let the guests eat first,” they chorused.

At that, the three travelers dashed to the table, plunked themselves down at the bench seat on one side of it, and began grabbing fruit by the handful and scooping it into their mouths. Chel bit into half an entire cluster of grapes, and from the corner of her eye, she saw Tulio staining his chin and neck with the juice of a melon and Miguel slurping the innards of a papaya. Gradually, the family joined them until all the children and their mother partook of the seemingly endless bounty. Closing her eyes as she savored the flavor of a plantain, Chel knew she should not make assumptions, but she figured that the children practiced better table manners than her or her men.

For the next several minutes, the world outside faded away, and life consisted solely of three vagabonds and their many hosts biting, chewing, gnawing, and sucking on tropical fruits. Chel thought of Altivo and how blissful he would be at the sight of such abundance. She made a mental note to save a few of the harder fruits and bring them to him after dinner.

Finally, as the piles of fruit shrank and the village woman’s eyes were drawn to a dragonfly that buzzed into the room, Chel saw her hostess slip the two prickly pears she had been manhandling back onto the table. Chel stole them and hid them beneath her clothing. She trusted Tulio and Miguel enough to believe that they would keep anyone in the family from noticing her absence; they were proven to be distracting, after all. On tiptoe, she slipped out the door.

Altivo saw her and started to whicker, but she shushed him right before handing him one of the prickly pears in her hand. His eyes lit up, and he devoured the spiny green fruit in two bites. Chel threw the other one on the ground, knowing Altivo would be able to reach it. When she walked inside, she saw that the children had cleared the ground floor. Tulio and Miguel now sat on either side of the village woman, the former holding her hand and the latter leaning against her shoulder. Chel knew she had nothing to fear—the village woman was far from unattractive despite her evident age (and even had it not shown on her face and body, the throng of children would have attested to it), but she knew how to keep men from straying from her once she had them.

In any case, once she resumed sitting at the table, across which now lay shells and scraps of all colors, both Miguel and Tulio looked at her. The two men and their female companion exchanged smiles, and the village woman laughed.

“What would the two of you say to a bath?” the village woman asked her male guests.

“With you? No offense, but, uh, we usually prefer our bath mates to have had had less time to give birth,” said Miguel.

“Not that we’re implying that you shouldn’t have had so many children!” Tulio interjected.

“Of course not,” said the village woman, grinning again. “I expected that you would want to bathe together and get ready for bed.”

Both the men heaved sighs of relief. They thanked their hostess and then took off upstairs.

Looking at the table again, Chel discovered a lone papaya and swiped it. She could join Tulio and Miguel later; right now, she had to reap the rewards of being the cleverest person in the room.

“I know what it is to be married to two men,” said the village woman. “Your husbands both seem better behaved than mine were, but I have only just met yours.”

The papaya flesh Chel was swallowing seemed to lodge in her throat. She coughed, thumping herself on the chest, before she managed to gulp down her food.

“I am not married to Tulio and Miguel. We are...very fond of one another…yes, very, very fond,” she said with a quick laugh. “But I don’t know any place where three people can get married.”

“You are in such a place. A woman may marry two men here. Years ago, I had two husbands at the same time. Twice, in fact. My last husband was my only one until he died.” She glanced away from Chel and released a sigh.

“I’m sorry. Can I ask what happened to him?”

“You can ask, but I would rather not tell you. It is not something we speak of.”

“Oh. Well, let’s not talk about it, then.” Grim possibilities raced through Chel’s mind. Did this woman’s previous husbands fall into a vat of boiling oil? Were they eaten by an incarnate jaguar-god or giant squid? Did they happen to be in the path of a wandering dictator who had their heads mounted on stakes outside his keep?

“I’m only glad that I could serve you. Why don’t you join your men upstairs? They seemed interested in your presence, if you ask me. I have a few spare rooms for you to sleep in, but no doubt they will still be bathing.” The village woman winked at her, and Chel nodded.

Just as Chel rose from the table, her hostess grabbed her by the wrist. Chel nearly twisted herself out of the hold until she remembered her obligations as a guest.

“Never enter the room at the very end of the hall.”

The village woman released Chel, who rubbed her wrist during her ascent of the staircase.

She indeed found Tulio and Miguel luxuriating in the house’s spacious, open bathtub, and after what must have been an hour of thrills, the three of them retired in the nearest room.

As they all settled down upon the palatial floor mats that were strangely provided already, Miguel remarked, “Who would have thought we’d find this kind of luck again? All the fruit we could eat, a nice bath, real beds…it’s almost perfect!”

“It isn’t paradise, but it’s got everything we need—except gold,” said Tulio. “An adventure’s not complete without gold. Well, _our_ adventures aren’t.”

“But,” said Miguel, rolling over onto one side, “I’ve been thinking—”

“That’s new.”

“Didn’t something about our hostess strike you as odd?” Tulio continued, as if Miguel had not said anything.

“Well, the army of children is unusual, I will grant you that.” Miguel scratched his chin. “And that garden’s worth of fruit on the table and the fresh bath water and the beds already prepared for us….”

Chel added, “And what she told me right before I came upstairs.”

“Oh?” asked Miguel, and he and Tulio looked at her.

“I was going to tell you earlier, but I wanted to wait until I was sure we had privacy. She said not to go into the room at the end of the hall.”

“Maybe that’s where she keeps the dresses she could wear before she had her fortieth child,” said Tulio.

“No, I’m serious. She really meant it. You don’t tell someone not to go into a room unless you have something to hide. I’m not sure how much longer we should stay here.”

“Ah, let’s not worry about it now,” said Miguel, wrapping his arm around Tulio’s shoulder. “We can spend one night here without any trouble, I’m sure. We don’t have to pretend to be gods this time.”

Chel sighed. “Fine, but I warned you.”

Shortly thereafter, Tulio proposed another round of what they had gotten up to while bathing, and Chel declined, claiming weariness and a need to sleep. In truth, she had no physical objections, but dire matters tended to vitiate enjoyment of erotic activities, in her experience, so she left her comrades to their own business. When she was certain that they were sufficiently oblivious to everything else, she crept out of the room and down the hall.

The hallway terminated in a single doorway, one much wider than the others. Chel trembled as she stood at the doorway’s edge and peered inside. Darkness pervaded the room, but after a short while of staring, Chel’s eyes discerned the outlines of a moving figure.

She saw a short, plump woman who could only have been the hostess. This woman stretched her arms as if engaged in a full-body yawn, but no yawn came from her. Instead, a cracking noise rippled through the air, and Chel stuffed her fist in her mouth as she saw the woman’s back split open.

Soon the crack spread up and down the hostess’s entire body until a huge creature emerged. Where once stood a squat matron now towered a monster with eight legs, a segmented body, and a pair of enormous fangs. In the corner lay the shape of a pile of skulls. Chel stifled a scream and took off running the other way.

She burst into the room she had been sharing with Tulio and Miguel, sprawled on their separate mats again.

“ _Get up_!” she whisper-shouted. “We have to leave now!”

“What?” asked Miguel groggily. “We just got here.”

“And Miguel and I literally just finished,” said Tulio. “We’re a little tired at the moment.”

“We can’t stay here another minute,” said Chel. “The hostess is a monster.”

“How can you say that?” Miguel said. “She’s the nicest person I’ve met in years.”

“No, she’s a giant spider. Put on your clothes, and let’s go. Now.” She hoped that neither man could see the tears forming in the corners of her eyes. If they refused to listen to her now, they would never be able to avoid listening to her again.

“A giant spider?” Tulio suddenly leapt up from his mat. After plucking the clothes that sat next to him and pulling the shirt over his head, he said, “Then that means that…oh. Oh, _no_. Miguel, get dressed! We have to get out of here!”

“What? Tulio, I didn't think you'd believe in giant spiders."

"If bloodthirsty gods and evil magicians are real, then so are spider-women!"

"Well, if you insist.” Miguel rose to his feet and dressed himself so slowly that Chel almost felt her heart stopping. When he joined hands with Tulio, Chel grabbed Tulio’s free hand and tugged both the men out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the house, never once looking back.

Altivo stood at his post, glaring at the humans who had neglected him.

“I’m sorry, boy,” said Tulio, who drew a knife and cut the rope that tied the horse to the stake. “We won't forget about you again.”

They all mounted Altivo, who struggled somewhat with bearing the weight of three riders, but he seemed to understand their desperation, so he cantered through the village, bypassing all the other houses and the great stone pyramid at the end, until he reached the jungle once more. A few minutes later, he slowed down, and Chel allowed herself one glance back, which revealed that the little armadillo had followed them as well.

Tulio dismounted the horse and inhaled deeply. “I never thought I’d be glad to be back in the jungle!”

“What, that woman really was a giant spider?” said Miguel.

“I would swear it on the gods’ finest jade,” Chel said. “I saw her transform with my own eyes. There were bones in the corners of her room.”

“Looks like it’s back to camping out under the stars for a while,” said Tulio.

And they did camp out under the stars that night. Their rest proved more peaceful than their previous attempts at doing so, though in the morning they all received a big surprise when Altivo spat up a strange sac of eggs covered in prickly-pear seeds.


End file.
